CBS 2's Jim Williams describes the enthusiasm at the election-night headquarters of Republican Bruce Rauner, the apparent winner of the Illinois governor race.

CBS 2's Jim Williams describes the enthusiasm at the election-night headquarters of Republican Bruce Rauner, the apparent winner of the Illinois governor race.

Bob Secter and Rick PearsonChicago Tribune

Salesman Rauner tries to close deal in Illinois governor's race.

Bruce Rauner's voice boomed across the beer garden at Schooner's, a blue-collar Bloomington watering hole known for its king-size pork tenderloin sandwiches that could feed a family of four.

"Look, I'm not a politician, I'm a business guy," declared Rauner to about 50 people, including many campaign volunteers. "I've been an entrepreneur and business builder my whole life and I'm going to make Illinois pro-business, pro-growth, pro-job creation again."

It's a go-to, red meat applause line for conservative audiences. On occasion Rauner throws in a folksier twist, introducing himself as "a traveling salesman."

Viewed in that light, Bruce Vincent Rauner, a 58-year-old Winnetka businessman who made his fortune building an equity investment empire, is engaged in his most ambitious sales job ever.

With great emphasis and at enormous personal expense, Rauner is pitching himself as the cure for a state government mired by its political leaders in trouble with a capital T.

Rival Democrats, including Gov. Pat Quinn, are "the four horsemen of the bad scenario of Illinois," Rauner told that Bloomington crowd. "They've been running our state into the ground."

All of which presents Rauner with a classic salesman's challenge: how to convince the customers — in this case skeptical Illinois voters who have been burned with frequency — that he can deliver what he's selling.

Rauner has the money and is socially moderate enough to be eminently salable as a Republican running in a blue state against a governor with low approval ratings. But as the campaign has unfolded, the first-time candidate has found his message countered by Democrats who are trying to turn his wealth and his business record against him.

Rapid rise

The son of a high-ranking executive at Schaumburg-based electronics giant Motorola, Rauner was raised on the North Shore and an upscale suburb outside Phoenix.

He entered Dartmouth College in 1974. He has said he planned on majoring in chemistry and biology, reflecting an early interest in environmental sciences. He switched to economics his junior year after a course changed his thinking to a belief that business decisions affected the environment. Rauner got his master's in business administration at Harvard University in 1981.

Nobody tries and puts more of their effort and attention into anything and nobody gets things done the way he does.— Diana Rauner

He's repaid both institutions. In 1997, at the age of 40, Rauner became one of the youngest alumni of Harvard's business school ever to endow a name professorship. At Dartmouth, two buildings bear his name, as do a scholarship and an endowed professorship in economics.

Rauner has been married twice and has six children. He and wife Diana met at his investment firm, GTCR. Rauner was at the firm for three decades, for much of it as its chairman, chief rainmaker and public face.

Rauner's rapid rise there was partly a matter of timing. In the early 1980s, armed with a freshly minted master's in business, Rauner joined GTCR in its infancy just as new IRS rules and a Reagan-era tax break on investment gains primed the private equity industry for an explosion.

GTCR grew to manage $11 billion in investments, much of it for public worker pension funds, while tapping those resources to buy and sell controlling interests in hundreds of companies as diverse as fast food, business outsourcing services and nursing homes.

So why would someone who seemingly has it all — influence, social standing and the financial freedom to indulge his passion for hunting, fishing and the outdoors — seek a career change so radical and fraught with inevitable headaches?

Ron Gidwitz, who ran for the Republican governor nomination in 2006 and now co-chairs Rauner's campaign, chalks it up to frustration over inaction and ineptitude in Springfield.

"I think he got thoroughly disgusted with everyone," said Gidwitz, like Rauner a multimillionaire investor. "Bruce got to a point where he believed nobody really felt compelled to fix things and he said, 'I'm going to do it.' "

Diana Rauner says that is simply the way her husband rolls. "When he puts his mind to something and makes a decision, he's going to do it. I can tell you he works harder," she told supporters last week. "Nobody tries and puts more of their effort and attention into anything and nobody gets things done the way he does."

Call it passion, call it hubris (Democrats certainly do), but Rauner's transition from a business world where he gets to call all the shots to a campaign world where he often has to deflect them has been a work in progress.

Friends say Rauner, despite his millions, doesn't put on airs — tracking with campaign ad imagery of the candidate wearing an $18 watch and driving a 21-year-old van. At the same time, some privately express surprise at his failure to grasp how such a depiction of personal frugality doesn't play in the context of a political campaign where his lifestyle was likely to surface: his seven homes, two ranches, $60 million in income last year and $140,000 membership in a wine club.

Rauner vows to use his business savvy to rescue Illinois, its government and its economy from financial chaos. But after nearly two years of campaigning, even his ally Gidwitz acknowledges Rauner is still trying to come to grips with the concept that being CEO of his own company is not the same as being CEO of an entire state.

"He is learning in this campaign that being governor is not a unilateral activity, it's not a corporate activity," Gidwitz said. "You've got to build relationships and coalitions. I'm not sure he understood that in the start of this campaign. But running for governor is a learning experience for anyone."

Entering public life

Before running for office, Rauner's entree into public life took the form of millions of dollars in donations to nonprofits, and he lent his name and energy to an array of prominent civic groups: the Ravinia Festival Association, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Chicago Public Education Fund.

On the campaign trail, Rauner often highlights his philanthropy, in particular stressing donations he has made to underwrite charter schools and other school reform efforts in Chicago. Records of a nonprofit foundation he and his wife run show their charitable giving to be eclectic and sometimes defying easy ideological classification.

Over two decades, the Rauners' foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union as well as groups supporting abortion rights, and wildlife and environmental preservation.

In recent years, the Rauners also have been major financial supporters of the Family Taxpayers Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting teachers unions that was founded by the late conservative activist Jack Roeser. More large Rauner donations have gone to the Illinois Policy Institute, which also promotes conservative causes, as well as the Donors Trust, a national charity that underwrites conservative advocacy.

As Rauner emerged as a major financial backer of charter schools, he also took a more politically active role in combating teachers unions that he blames for undermining educational achievement in more conventional public schools.

He spent $600,000 in seed money to help secure passage of a state law proclaimed by its backers as an all but impenetrable bar to school strikes. Instead, it became a rallying cry to Chicago teachers who did go on strike in 2012 and won contract concessions from the Emanuel administration.

During the Republican primary, Rauner roused conservative audiences with heated attacks on the power of "government union bosses" — a stance he has significantly downplayed in a general election campaign where he faces strenuous opposition from organized labor, which backs Quinn.

Rauner has sought to focus his campaign solely on fiscal issues, saying he has no "social agenda." It's an effort to walk a fine line: attracting moderates while downplaying his support of abortion rights to avoid antagonizing social conservatives. Rauner has declined to take a position on same-sex marriage, saying voters should have gotten to weigh in on the issue and, absent that, he would have vetoed the bill.

"For Bruce, being pro-choice, a social moderate, he's the right mix for winning Illinois," said U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk. "I can say that having done that already as a Republican."

There's a long history in Republican politics of candidates staking out conservative positions during the primary and then moderating those views for a broader general election audience. Rauner has found that transition problematic.

He spoke to conservative audiences of his opposition to hiking the minimum wage, an increase that polls show voters broadly favor. Later, Rauner said he would back an increase under certain conditions.

In the age of YouTube and social media, Democrats have resurrected old video and audio clips of those comments to cast doubt on his sincerity and paint a caricature of him as a heartless billionaire. (Rauner estimates his net worth at more than $500 million but less than $1 billion.)

Shooting from hip

But some things haven't changed for Rauner since the primary, including a tendency to shoot from the hip.

He vows to "prosecute" corruption if elected governor (he would have no legal authority to do so), pledges to jump-start major policy initiatives through executive orders (a power significantly limited by the Illinois Constitution) and complains of voter fraud he calls "massive" (few documented cases have come to light).

At one GOP forum, he spoke of "friends" telling him how elections were so rigged by Democrats that "there's still about one-third of the precincts in Chicago where the bosses just talk over what they want the turnout to be, what they want the margin to be. Then they just do that."

Such notions may resonate with GOP audiences ripe for Chicago bashing, but they also play to an archaic stereotype rendered all but impossible in today's era of electronic voting.

For all his blunt talk and broad assertions, Rauner's campaign sometimes seems a study in mixed messages and contradictory images.

In TV ads and speeches, Rauner vows to dramatically cut taxes in Illinois while also spending more on education and public works. But he has declined to explain how he plans to accomplish that, and also has been vague about addressing a pension mess he says is devouring state finances.

That budget-slashing message also runs up against Rauner putting more than $18.6 million of his own money into his campaign — by far a self-funding record for an Illinois governor candidate.

The Republican candidate plays up a take-charge, detail-oriented reputation but says he knew nothing of controversial business practices that contributed to bankruptcies, lawsuits and even criminal convictions at some of the firms controlled by Rauner's investment partnership, GTCR.

And Rauner pledges to free Illinois from the corrosive clout of special interests, yet has struggled to explain strings he pulled to get a daughter into an elite public high school in Chicago.

Business scrutiny

Rauner's campaign isn't just about getting him elected governor — he's also provided a financial lifeline for the long-struggling Illinois Republican Party. Since March, Rauner, his wife and his campaign have donated $5 million to the state GOP and $700,000 to Republican legislative candidates and local party organizations.

It's been helpful to local Republican organizations that have struggled with the GOP shut out of power in Springfield, said Randy Pollard, who heads the Republican County Chairmen's Association.

"It allows these organizations to do things they normally have never thought about doing or have never been able to do financially," said Pollard, who is also Fayette County GOP chairman in southern Illinois.

"The thing is, (Rauner) didn't just write the check," Pollard added. "He has gone everywhere. He's gone places where no county was too small, no event was too small. His appearances helped drive people to a fundraiser they might not have gone to. People get involved, and the local county organization has benefited from that."

But the flip side of Rauner being both so rich and so free with his checkbook is that it also feeds into a populist narrative of Quinn's campaign that seeks to sow doubt about the very business record the Republican offers as his central argument for election. It is a replay of the strategy Democrats used with success in 2012 against presidential candidate Mitt Romney, another wealthy former private equity executive.

While Rauner stresses the impressive and consistent profits GTCR logged under his command, critics question his stewardship and accountability by highlighting glaring exceptions to that track record.

At Lason, a GTCR-owned document imaging firm on whose board Rauner personally sat, top executives engineered a sweeping accounting fraud that inflated earnings on paper and sent the stock price soaring. Three Lason officials eventually went to prison, but not before GTCR cashed out its investment at a profit while other investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In Florida, GTCR is currently a defendant in a federal trial over claims that it and investment partners fraudulently sold a nursing home chain in 2006 to avoid liabilities in wrongful death lawsuits that have topped $1 billion.

In Chicago, GTCR bought an 11 percent stake in The Private Bank in late 2007 just as the business banking institution embarked on an aggressive growth strategy as the economy soured the following year. The company started reporting tens of millions of dollars in losses. Within 14 months, Private Bank secured a $244 million federal bailout to stay afloat.

Reacting to those and other troubled GTCR investments, Rauner has been consistent. He deplores any problems but says he was unaware because they occurred at levels well below his pay grade.

A closer?

As Rauner campaigns across Illinois, a couple of stories have become staples: There's the one in which his teenage daughter, the youngest of his children, fretted over the prospect of him becoming Illinois governor because she didn't want him to go to jail. And there's the one where he acknowledges having a face and voice for radio and then apologizes for voters having to see him on TV so often.

But he has worked to noticeably soften what critics said was a my-way-or-the-highway attitude toward governing. Campaigning recently in Lake County, Rauner added a wrinkle. "I want to be your partner and ally," he told a group of mayors. To a group of female volunteers, he declared, "I want to be a great partner and ally for you."

During a stop in downtown Libertyville, Rauner shook hands with brunch-time diners at the Townee Square Restaurant, the self-proclaimed "Home of the Double Egg Order," a two-for-one special.

Rauner told a group at one table: "I grew up in Lake County, actually in Deerfield." Before posing for a selfie, Rauner declared to parents and children seated at another table: "We want to have great schools in Illinois."

As they finished their meal, Andres Garcia, his wife, Lillian, and their children, Madison and Lukas, shook hands and chatted with Rauner. Was the encounter enough to close the sale?

"We're still deciding," said Andres Garcia. If anything, Lillian added, "It's better meeting him in person than watching him on TV."